


vae victis

by bladeCleaner



Category: OFF (Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Spoilers, Spoilers For The Entire Game, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zacharie had three friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	vae victis

**Author's Note:**

> Quoted from TV Tropes:  
> Someone asked Mortis Ghost if the cat mask that Zacharie wears after Valerie's death was made from his body. And what was his answer?  
> "No, Pablo, Valerie and Zacharie are best friends. He wouldn't do that to them."

There’s something fascinating about the way the Batter moves. He knows, of course, that his darling little puppeteer only sees them as pixelated characters who walk in straight, jaunty lines. But in this little fabrication he calls home, the determined purifier moves smooth and hungry like a shark. His eyes always closed-for what need has he for sight when all that matters is the target? His face is a blank, as stoic as a rock. Zacharie admires that in him, that single-mindedness.

He moves as if his body cannot stand to stay still for more than one throbbing minute. In him he can sense a deep, dark longing for blood spilt on colourful walls and then-a trigger-happy swing of his arm muscles, _flash_ goes his bat like an executioner’s axe. How absolutely consumptive. 

Zacharie approaches him first in the mines. He’s got that little gift of teleportation, now that he finally exists-now that the player’s clicked on the application for a New Game. He can be anywhere now and knows everything.

Even if he’s only existed, for, say, five minutes.

He can remember his entire life before this. But what would that mean, if he’s only existed for five minutes? Did everything that happened to him before now actually happen?

Before he knows it, he’s shaking away the confusion with a rock-hard certainty and laughing softly. The Batter and his invisible puppetmaster. The controller and the controlled.

He can see it all before him, playing out like a video game should.

\--

Zacharie finds himself on the rooftop of the Library right before the Batter arrives. He’s high up. The sky is beautiful from here and the entire Zone is laid out before him in fluorescent pink. He can feel the breeze at the back of his neck. Clouds drift lazily by and he calculates how much effort it must have taken to program them. Ah, but this is where it all began, the three of them.

\--

“I’d never harm a bird,” Valerie says, shaking his head.

“Oh, but do they not look delicious to you? A cat is allowed its indulgences in consumption, after all,” Pablo replies, smiling eerily as ever.

“I am a pacifist,” Valerie declares gravely, “And my motto is not to harm a single soul if I can help it. Food is plentiful without having to tear down the birds, dear brother.”

“Still! They fly about in circles and my paws itch for some bones to fly in heaps, my stomach growls like an angered beast. We are predators, after all.” he bares his teeth even more so with his grin. Valerie licks his fur dismissively.

Zacharie’s voice comes from behind them. His feet dangle on the ledge and he sounds distant. “Don’t let Japhet hear you say that. You know, he built this Library.”

They both look to him, puzzled. “You’ve seen Japhet?” They ask in unison.

“I’ve…read things in the Library. After all, information is power.”

“You are a mysterious one, Zacharie. I’ve read all the books in this Library and I’ve never seen him mentioned.” Valerie says slowly.

He shrugs. “Perhaps being an owner of an amusement park gives me special privileges to rooms you cannot access.”

At that the Judge’s eyes light up. “Ah, speaking of which, when is the roller coaster slated to be finished? I confess I am delighted by the excitement it will offer.”

“Soon, soon. Guaranteed to be completed by the time the player arrives in Zone 0.”

“I still am not convinced he is not a delusion you’ve made up to imply that we are not good company-” the Judge says, mock-hurt though his eyes are shining still. Zacharie knows him too well, by now.

He laughs softly. “Your company is more than sufficient. After all, who else will rub against my legs and purr in the most insistent manner for petting? Certainly not Valerie.”

“I find myself offended on his behalf,” the Judge replies, “He has done so on several occasions, and with spectacularly better results than my own beautiful purrs.”

“I must object. My purrs are just as melodic and I would say that I garner better results simply because I do not try as often-”

“Everybody adores me, sibling, I have the sneaking suspicion that our good friend here is merely biased against me for he cannot purr as I can-”

They laugh and talk and argue well into oblivion. If he could have anything, let him remember this: the feeling of camaraderie and hope, the affectionate nudging of Valerie and Pablo by his side, whiling away his days under the sun with his two best friends in the highest point of the Zone. In those days, he was still so far away from the cold killer's accomplice he would become.

\--

_“Nice view up here, don’t you think?_

_It almost makes me forget that this is only a video game.”_

\--

When Valerie dies right above him, the snap of Japhet’s neck finally cracking under the heavy thud of the Batter’s weapon, Zacharie closes his eyes. Imagines the entire Zone flaying white as bones, like Zone 1, devoid of colour and feeling, like him.

The blasted fire-bird gives a few more chirps and dies. He watches as the sky transmutes into a sickly cinnabarine. He’s about to disappear again, but not before he hears Pablo meowing away sadly. His heart wrenches in on itself and turns inside out. He feels nothing after that but a fleeting stab of loss, replaced by the joviality he feels in destruction. All the lands are slated for the void and emptiness. He wants it all to burn with a white flame to be replaced by the nothingness. Oh, there is so much beauty in the blankness, let him revel in the void, let the whole world spiral into quietness. He watches it all and with the death of Valerie he watches another fragment of his old self peel away, to be replaced with the niggling urge to watch the universe crack into two.

He arrives at Zone 3 with yet another Colour, another Bat, more powerful than the next. Before the Batter arrives, though, he finds himself casting off his current mask. It doesn’t feel right anymore.

He finds himself in the Judge’s place as the Batter’s guide. It’s a delightful position to be in, of course, but wouldn’t it be jarring to see his face instead of dear Pablo’s?

On a whim, he makes a mask of a cat with the supplies he has around him. That should make the Batter more settled around him. He does notice that the puppeteer behind the Batter seems to flinch whenever he speaks. This should make them more comfortable. Perhaps he should adopt Pablo’s charming personality while he’s at it.

When it’s finished, he does not notice that it resembles anyone at all.

\--

When he goes back to visit Zone 2 while the Batter’s pre-occupied, he finds Pablo still on the rooftop, meowing piteously.

It’s been a long time since he’s been here, so a little stunned, he asks, “What are you doing?”

“Zacharie!” the Judge bursts out, smiling. His smile looks a little crooked now. “Have you seen Valerie? Would you tell him to come see me? I’ve been calling him for so long now. You know how he gets so engrossed in his books…”

Zacharie backs away so fast he almost falls off the building. The Judge’s eyes are completely glazed over and as soon as he’s finished his sentence he goes right back to meowing.

\--

_“Pablo isn’t really in top-form at the moment.”_

\--

He doesn’t go back to any Purified zones after that. He goes back to Zone 0, checks on Sugar and waits for the Batter to come back.

\--

Zacharie met her at his park. She’d been riding a pedalo in the river outside of his office. She’d seemed so happy and sane back then, whooping periodically. It had, unfortunately, been frightening the Elsen into thinking that the end times had come. They’d been so scared even his guard had run away.

She’d finally stopped mucking around and had returned to the origin point where he was standing. He’d opened his mouth to say something when she’d said, “I can see your real face.”

He’d been silenced.

“You look as nice as a beautiful day.” Then she’d leapt out of her pedalo, effortlessly landing in front of him and kissed him on the side of his face where his mask ended. They’d become fast friends after that, though he was always closer to Pablo and Valerie. Sugar was always running off on her own, a spontaneous girl whose pace outmatched even them; the wandering band of neutral nomads, who held no particular allegiance to any one Zone.

Then, one day, after she’d finally been grounded, Sugar became the only one outside of Zone 3 who knew what sugar was made of.

When she found out she’d nearly killed her father and decimated the entire of Zone 3. Zacharie found her in a pile of corpses next to her heavily bleeding dad, giggling and mumbling incoherently, her smile now the twisted version of what had enchanted him the first time they’d met. She’d been completely covered in blood and bits of sugar.

\--

She dies underground. She dies without ever having seen the dawn of another beautiful day-she was-

She _was_ -

She was a _**game construct** -_ 

Nothing more...

_“…Maybe it’s better like that.”_

\--

It’s slowly becoming harder and harder to remember who he really is. To discern one mask from another, so to speak. Is he real? 

Does it matter if he is? His world is about to end by the hand of a monster. Reality does not matter.

 _“Alas, the time has come for you to spend the golden fruits of your carnage.”_ Under the mask, he smiles, a facsimile of Pablo’s.

He wonders how the Puppeteer will choose, when faced with the Judge’s choice. Ah, but what is truly the lesser of two evils? To live knowing he helped kill the world, or to die and in so doing be absolved of guilt?

His last words to the Batter are, _“Bis Vincit, Que Se Vincit In Victoria.”_

He’s finally conquered himself. His purpose has been served.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation of the title: _woe to the conquered_.


End file.
